Debit cards are traditionally eligible for processing using one of two, or sometimes more, debit networks. When a consumer uses a debit card to fund a financial transaction, the merchant is often responsible for selecting which eligible debit network is to be used for processing. Merchants many times select a debit network based on the expense charged by the network for processing the transaction and for the routing of the transaction to the network itself. In some instances, a merchant may select a network based on convenience. Due to the volume of debit transactions for many retailers, merchants typically use a routing table, which sets a priority debit networks to be used, such that the highest (most preferred) debit network is always used if available, and continuing down to the first available network if the highest or next highest is unavailable.
Accordingly, many debit networks may desire to identify their position in a merchant's routing table. However, pricing structures and circumstances frequently change, which many times result in merchants and retailers modifying their routing table accordingly. For merchants that process debit transactions funded by debit cards associated with a large number of different debit networks, pricing structures and network configurations may change frequently. This may result in a debit routing table that changes the order of its network preferences often. Therefore, while a debit network may eventually discover their position in a merchant's routing table, such information may become outdated as soon as a merchant makes a modification to their table.
Thus, there is need for a technical solution to detecting changes in a merchant's debit routing table.